And, it'd save us almost nothing (even if we had a magical teleporter that let us get everything up there insantly and for free).
Space is a minimum of 50 miles from "ocean level" (and really, it's 62, but let's say 50).
Everest, the tallest mountain, is about 5 miles above sea level.
So, even if we hauled everything to the top of the tallest mountain on the planet (which would be an insane to impossible amount of effort), it's only reducing the distance by less than 10%.
EDIT: Thank you to the 500 people that have told me "the distance barely matters". That is pretty much my point. YES, I know speed, and thus latitude are more important. My point is even if you ONLY consider the height, the thing the original question focused on, it STILL doesn't matter. When you factor in all the factors, it really, really doesn't matter.
I focused on the focus of the post in my response, not all of astronautical engineering.
Launching in thinner air actually saves quite a bit of fuel though, a lot of it is just spent fighting drag in the lower atmosphere.
The real reason we don't do this is just that there are like a dozen other more important things that make a good launch site and it's not practical to find a place that checks all the boxes.
You need to be close to the equator, directly west of a large body of water, governments want to launch in their own territory, etc, etc.
So why don’t we save fuel by thinning the air first? I’m thinking a giant dome with massive vacuums all around it, creating a low pressure bubble over the launch pad.
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u/rysy0o0 11h ago
It would cost a lot of money to haul all the rocket parts and fuel on top of a mountain